souvinior3

ICICI Centre for Mathematical Sciences

MESSAGE

Dr. Anil Wilson

The Centre for Mathematical Sciences is the realization of a dream - the dream to break through the rigid confines of the curriculum wall and engage in an exercise involving two fundamental principles of education. In the rigidity and 'authoritativeness' that necessarily accompanies a curriculum-driven-mass-examination-system, these principles are the first casualty.

The first is the principle of FREEDOM. Freedom to explore and to reflect, to create and to construct, to venture and to wonder. Such freedom requires that the individual be active and responsible and not just a cog in a machine however well-oiled. Such a freedom is far removed from the system of mere trasferals of information that our pedagogical processes tends to lapse into. Essentially it is the freedom to BE.

The second principle is the principle of DISCOVERY. Discovery of new ways of inquiry, fresh ideas, novel concepts; a discovery of our powers of perception; a discovery that delivers us from the mind-sets in which we tend to entrap ourselves; and, in the ultimate analysis, a discovery of our own selves.

The Centre for Mathematical Sciences is a part of our larger endeavour to explore these principles of Freedom and Discovery. It is an attempt to move away from the 'circles of certainty' that traditional pedagogical processes deal in (and with good reasons) and to try and see how education can seek to make critical interventions into reality. In moving within these 'circles of certainty' pedagogical systems are forced into the narrative overdrive. In fact it would not be too far fetched to say that one of the main ailments afflicting education today is 'narrative sickness'. In a system where students are not expected to seek their own questions but to find answers to questions posed by an abstract authority, they are reduced to role of cataloguers and collectors of information. Yet, if we have to graduate from 'gathering information' to 'dealing in knowledge' we must remember that knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through restless inquiry and persistent problem-posing, in moving from transferals of information to acts of cognition.

Such an attempt also resolves the long standing teacher-taught dichotomy. It posits a dynamics where both are simultaneously teacher and taught. It is a situation where a teacher moves beyond issuing communiqués to establishing communion. From being a prescriber and a depositer, a teacher becomes an associate, an enabler, and a fellow- voyager. We often forget that a teacher cannot think for his/her students nor can s/he impose his/her thoughts on them; s/he can only think with his/her students.

The Centre for Mathematical Sciences is an offspring of such an understanding of the processes and purposes of education. The idea is not to supplant traditional forms of pedagogy but to round them off through auxiliary exercises such as the present one.

Given the present scenario in higher education, this is a very challenging task and I commend all those who took up the challenge of responding to such a vision. Theirs has been a pioneering effort carried out through sheer grit and raw determinism. The single-minded commitment of Dr. Dinesh Singh, Mr. N. Raghunathan, Dr. Sanjeev Agrawal, Dr. Geetha Venkataraman, Dr. Radha Mohan, Dr. Bikram Phookan, Dr. Sanjeev Grewal, Dr. Sanjay Kumar and others, is the stuff that legends are made of.

I am proud to be their colleague and a sleeping partner in this exercise.

I am also grateful to all those who have helped in seeting up this Centre through the sharing of expertise, financial resources, and encouragement in a thousand different ways.

The task has begun well and the reward can be felt in palpable feeling of joy that pervades those involved in the activities of the Centre. I hope this joy acquires an infectious nature and spreads far and wide.

Dr. Anil Wilson